There are a number of contagious diseases that can be spread by passing infectious agents or microbes from one person's blood or other infective body fluid to another person's blood or other body fluid. Two of the most feared diseases that can be spread in this manner are Hepatitis and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, otherwise known as AIDS. Often, one must touch, handle or otherwise come in contact with a person's body fluid either knowing that the person has a disease such as AIDS or without an opportunity to adequately determine whether the person has such a disease. For example, doctors and nurses must treat patients and perform surgical operations on patients sometimes knowing that the person has a contagious disease or during an emergency situation when there is no opportunity to determine whether the person has such a disease. Similarly, policemen and ambulance workers must often handle and treat persons involved in automobile accidents, shootings, and the like without an opportunity for determining whether the person has a contagious disease.
Doctors, dentists, medical technologists, and nurses protect against the transmission of contagious diseases in the work place and during invasive procedures by wearing conventional flexible, stretchable, disposable, sterile latex gloves. Such latex gloves are usually powdered on the inside with talc or a similar material to help keep the glove interior dry and to facilitate removal of the glove. A decision was recently made to equip the Denver, Colo. police force with such latex gloves so that policemen could use the gloves in situations where they would contact another person's body fluids, such as at car accidents and shootings. While these conventional latex gloves provide a great degree of protection against the transmission of contagious diseases, such gloves can be torn, ripped, punctured or otherwise cut. The person's hand is often correspondingly cut immediately below the cut in the glove. For example, doctors often cut their fingers and hands with a scalpel during operations and sometimes puncture their fingers and hands with suture needles. Also, policemen might cut their hands on pieces of glass, jagged pieces of metal, and the like at car accident scenes. The frequency of such cuts is significant, and, when considering the fear of accidentally contracting diseases such as AIDS, constitutes a serious problem.